Remembrances of the Amazon

Lembranca Do Amazones..........Remembrances of the Amazon Part one.

Lembranca Do Amazones…February 1999
PART ONE...the adventure ride.
Tue Feb 9,1999

This is not where my story begins but it is where I start to make notes in my journal. My story begins years ago with the dream of visiting Brazil, and when I got the opportunity to go I jumped at the chance.
It is Tuesday night and we do not leave until Thursday night, I am so excited with anticipation I cannot sleep, eat, think, or function like I should. I am ready to go as my bags have been packed and repacked a dozen times, we (my friend Sue) and myself have spent the last year getting our shots, even though we have been to New Guinea we still need boosters and new shots, such as Rabies (3) and hep series and dengue, meningoccocis, cholera, typhoid, yellow fever and the list goes on.


We have spent hours helping to get medical supplies ready to go. The drug companies have donated literally hundreds of pounds of supplies, but they all come in patient sample packs and we have had to pop pills out of the blister packs to reduce the size and weight and bulk. Then we have had to put them in baggies and label everything. Dr. Kuhns (and from here on will be referred to as Bob) had us and a dozen other people over one Saturday night and we had a pill popping party., he gives us boxes to be put into our luggage and taken into a cartel country; seems odd to be taking drugs into another country that has a big drug problem, but not the right medicine to treat their own people.


I just got home from delivering Sue’s share of the pharmaceutical stuff that she will be carrying on the plane with her and giving her a back pack to take, she is having the same hurt in the pit of her stomach as I am, it is the anticipation of it all that is doing a number on us.


Thursday February 11,1999
Well the day has arrived and we left the Yakima airport at 8:20 PM and flew to Portland where we will stay the night and meet up with the rest of the group in the morning at the airport, it is now 1 am and I have a wake up call for 5 am.


Friday February 12,1999
Wake up call at 5 am found me already awake and ready to face the day, we meet Dr. K and Dr. O and grab a shuttle to the airport, we arrive and find the group is already grouping together, thirty three of us are to fly out of Portland and to Denver where we change planes and fly to Miami, then into Brazil to Manaus…it is already starting to get crazy with so many people to look out for each other, but somehow we all manage to get on the right planes and into Customs at Florida for entry into Brazil.

This is my first experience with the laid back "you can’t rush me attitude" of the Brazilian people…and the start of the language barrier problem.

Sue, Dr Bob and myself exchange money in Miami airport to (Hacks..bucks) or the real term for the dollar is reals, the exchange rate is almost two for one, so my thousand dollars I have along has almost doubled… feel so nervous carrying that kind of money on me, I am so glad I bought Sue and myself a money pouch that goes inside of the waistband and lays next to the skin (or underwear).


Saturday February 13,1999
We leave Miami and arrive in Manaus at three in the morning; this airplane is so old and rickety it would not have surprised me to have had them load cattle and sheep on it. What a horrible flight, and the attendants speak Portuguese so the hand gesturing and my poor Spanish are coming in handy...Portuguese is Spanish and French sorta, nonetheless I’m starting to feel lost.

We get off the plane to the biggest blast of hot air I can ever remember feeling, gawd its three in the morning and it is 88 degrees out with humidity so high everything is wet. We came from a cold climate so of course we are over dressed to start with.

It that wasn’t enough of a shock to our systems then the ride to the Lider hotel sure was. Three Volkswagen vans pull up and we crowd thirty three people into them and luggage and supplies, it has to be a Guinness book record or something, the tires are almost flat and the drivers seem to not care, the vans only have front seats, so all the luggage went in one van and the people crammed into two vans, only little side vent windows in the back, I thought I was going to pass out from the heat of the bodies just about the time we get to the hotel. What a sight we must have been when we pull up and all theses people get out and invade the hotel at 6 in the morning..Dr. K says" it’s all just part of the adventure."


We had rooms assigned to us and I thought at the time it was silly to get rooms since we had to leave the hotel at nine to get to the river to catch the ferry by one thirty, but we had pre paid for this so why not take a shower anyway. Sue fell asleep for a few hours, I was way too wound up to try to sleep, but since I had been traveling for over 20 hours I did lay down and try to get some swelling out of my feet.
We still did not have an interpreter with us; the person never did show up, I tried to get the man behind the desk to make a phone call home for me to tell Tom we were in Brazil, he could not understand me, so he made a phone call to someone that spoke English and handed me the phone so I could tell this person what I was trying to say. Then I handed back the phone so the person could relate that all I wanted was to use the phone. Well then the operator did not speak English so she had to get an international English speaking operator to help me, and I am told all this is probably costing about 10 dollars per minute. I finally get through to Tom on a collect call as my calling card access number was wrong, and I told him I was fine and had arrived, the connection was very poor, could hardly hear each other.


I hung up from talking to Tom and went back to the lobby, this is where we got our boat assignments and broke up into three groups. The place we were to go was changed as the cartel involvement was to heavy in the area and it was considered not safe…(after I got home I heard of three Americans killed in (above) the area, so sorry for them but glad we didn’t go to that area also.)

Pastor Diaz got us an interpreter (of sorts) to take us to the ferry that we are to catch to cross the Amazon, then we are to go by bus two hours by road to catch up to the assigned boat…or so that was the plan…this is where the heart of my story begins, nothing from this point on makes a lot of sense and not one thing went as was planned or paid for.

Nine of us arrived at the Amazon River, eleven are suppose to be in our group, but two med students missed connections and I am told will catch up to us later, I ponder this as I am so confused as to how they will accomplish this with the language barrier problem and no contact person in Brazil, everyone is heading in different directions to get to mission sites.

We arrive at the designated spot only to see the ferry leaving, and yet we are early…so it is off to a great start…the ferry has cars, cattle and people on it, I do not know how they accomplish all of this but it manages to chug out of sight. Our guide by this time was hunting and negotiating small boats to take us across, we found two boats so half of our luggage and people went in one and the same for the other boat…we got sucker punched on the price, but here we are standing there looking like loco touristos and it might as well of said “screw me now” so that is what happened.

We cross the Amazon at the point where the Rio Negro and the Solimoes flow together, this is actually the start of the Amazon and it is called the mixing of the waters, it flows with black water into brown water and is really a spectacular sight, later I saw it from the air and it was even more grand from that view. This river is the largest river in the world; at this point it is about 5 miles wide and later will widen out to over one hundred miles wide at its widest point. We arrive on the other side to a small town called Carrolho; again we must have been a real sight as we are nine people with a guide and each of us has about four pieces of luggage and all the food for the next few weeks and ten five gallon water containers to be filled with clean water at our destination point for drinking, giving us about fifty gallons of clean water. The word got around, and I think the whole town showed up to have a look at us…we looked like Hollywood had arrived. In stark contrast to how we looked were people that were so poor they carried live’s possessions in a sack.


We waited in the sun for five hours and the vans that were to meet us had not shown up, it was starting to get dark and we had to come to a decision soon. There was no place in this town to stay the night, and the ferry had already crossed back to Manaus, so like the dumb touristos that we were we went against the better judgment of our guide and hired two VW buses to take us to our boat. Big mistake.


It had rained (this is the monsoon season) and the road through the mountains was pure mud, a trip that was to take only two hours ended up taking us seven hours. I will forever remember that as “the night of pure terror” and, as the night I was sure I was going to die in the ride of my life. I was so afraid of going off the cliffs into the jungle as our buses got caught up in axle deep mud and would slide and spin completely out of control, that at one point I remember wetting my self from terror. No one noticed we all were covered in mud from head to toes from pushing and falling into it, at this point all of us were barefoot as the sandals stayed stuck in the mud and keep us from walking, so off they came…the time when my terror got the best of me was when the van went up on two wheels and it looked like we were going to roll off a cliff, I got out and proceeded to say "enough I was going to walk," the guide tried to get me to get back in but I had had enough. I think the next step would have been a heart attack. I could take no more. Sue joined me as did Dr. Dave the Dentist, we set off to walk. An hour later we were at the top of a hill and the two buses had gotten dug out of the mud and the steering wired back together and had caught up to us (all this done by flashlight). The road was looking a little better like maybe it was not going to be as bad, also no cliffs here so we got back into the buses and continued on. Bob had been saying all night "this is just part of the adventure” but even he stopped saying that by now.


We arrived at the place where our boat was to pick us up and NO BOAT. Seems that it got tired of waiting and left to go back to Autez. It is now 12:30 AM Sunday morning, the last sleep I (we) have had was Wed night and the last food we had had was an avocado sandwich earlier in the day. The only thing to do at 12:30 is to hire a boat to go look for our boat so that’s what we did, everybody is for hire there and it all comes with a steep price to us stupid gringo loco touristos.


Sunday February 14,1999…PART TWO
Cultural shock.

The first boat we hired was little more than a canoe with a small motor. It did not have enough speed to do anything, so this little boat went and got a larger boat with a bigger motor to help us zoom up the river to catch the barge we had rented. We all stayed behind and waited in a riverboat house, the guide went with the small boat so here we are in a house waiting with people that we could not understand…But fatigue and being very nervous has no language barrier, the people very graciously got out pillows and brought out a few chairs so we could sit down. Dr. Bob laid on the floor, he was getting cold as he drifted off to sleep so he found a gunny sack and put it over him, this was not enough so he went and sat by the kerosene lantern to get some warmth, it was a little chilly as we all were absolutely caked with red wet mud.


Sue found a chair and fell asleep right away. The lady of the house put Kara (a 17 year old girl) up on the pool table to sleep and took two hammocks down from the rafters and put Nancy and Andrew in them. I was thinking how dirty and poor this place is yet they had a pool table, how strange.


Dr. Dave and I just sat and looked around wondering what we had gotten ourselves into, yet I marveled at the fact that here we are in a country that is so strange by my standards yet these people were kind enough to get up out of their sleep to help us, and they stood over us like our protectors, like we were something special. They even gave up their beds so someone could sleep.


At one point I needed to go to the bathroom, on the road I stepped behind the muddy vans, yet here I didn’t want to leave this house for any reason. I asked the lady for the la feminena, the banyero…she said "ah sim do toilette" she hands me a flashlight and opens a door and gestures, step into this room…good thing I am cautious by nature as the floor was gone and you straddle the water and pee, everything goes into the water…this became a big issue with me the whole trip, defecate, urinate, throw garbage in, then bath in it... just exchange body odor for algae odor.


It is now three AM and I hear the sound of a motorboat, gawd what a good sound to hear, then I see a very large boat rounding the bend, I could have cried with delight at the sight of this big barge. We load all our supplies and luggage and pay off all the people we need to pay off, and we are off.


The first thing we do is hand all the luggage up the ladder to the top deck, I grab a dry shirt and we all proceed to get the hammocks hung, we are nine of us crammed into a small space that has an awning over it. I decide to check out the rest of this boat, and in doing so found a toilet, yes with a seat. It has dirty river water in the bowl but it works and it flushes, I use it and get ready to leave this bathroom and the door knob comes off, I am trying not to panic, but it is getting very hard, This bathroom is about three feet by three feet with an open window at about waist high level, if you want to close this window you slide the wood up and it closes.


I lean out the window and begin to yell; lucky for me Kara was standing on the side of the boat the bathroom was on and she was above me on the second deck, she went and got the interpreter and the captain’s son to get me out of the bathroom.


It is now 4 am and we all crawl into our hammocks to get a few hours of sleep while the boat heads down the river to a town called Autez, I remember what a peaceful feeling it was to sway in a hammock in the dark with a gentle breeze, feeling like well this isn’t so bad after all.

6 a.m. I wake to voices, lots of voices, singing people, and it is getting louder and more intense, I literally fall out of my hammock to go investigate, I go down the little narrow ladder to the first floor and what a shock, the boat is filling up with men women and children and they are putting up hammocks all over the place (later I did a count and it was 60 hammocks). I went back upstairs and got back into my own hammock and thought I best get more sleep this just is not happening.


I slept until 8 am when the boat begins to move, it woke me up. Everyone else was up so I got filled in on what was happening.


When I agreed to go on this mission I was assured it was not religious, only a medical mission. Seems I was mislead, and so this was the start of my mistrust and my anger that would rear its head from time to time.
I will call the Pastor of the Seventh day Adventist church El Pastore for this two weeks as I was told his name and for the life of me I could never remember it. Well it had been prearranged (unknown to me and others) that the Seventh Day Adventist Pastor (and he speaks no English) was going to join our trip in Autez and go on the medical missions with us, the guide that was with us was sent back to Manaus by line boat to look for the two women med students, so a new guide and interpreter was assigned to us, his name was Neilson, he was 24, married and had a daughter that also came along on the boat with us, as did El Pastore’s family.


Seems that El Pastore invited his whole congregation to go on this trip with us (at least for the next three days) so that is why when I woke up to singing it was because it is a ritual to start the day with song and prayer and end the day with it. I did come to adore these people and the lack of speaking Portuguese was not a barrier in a short time.


We left Autez and headed six hours up the river to a small village that had a school in it, this is where the Pastore;s congregation spent several nights so that we could set up MEDICO. (Clinic). On the trip up the river it was a very sunny beautiful day, the boat chugging (noisily) and slowly along, it was a fifty mile trip and took six hours to get there so you know the boat didn’t go fast.


Along the way we stayed close to the banks as it was away from the currents and allowed for better fuel consumption, so of course less money to be spent. This was really fascinating as we all got to see the water buffalo and the white egrets and some Parrots, I was wishing to see more of the birds but they flew away when they heard our noisy boat and the ones that didn’t fly away had such good camouflage it was hard to sight them.


At one time we had pink and blue dolphins following our boat, what a sight, it is impossible to describe how thrilling this was to see them and have them play a tag of sorts game with us. We had sandwiches for lunch as the little kitchen below was filled with women getting their cooking done for their own families. Later in the day our crew was getting so hungry for real food that Sue and I went down to the storage area to finally get a chance to see what was in all the boxes we had been toting with us for so long…what a surprise when we found six cases of molding bread, 30 pounds of rice and thirty of beans, one case of canned milk and two cabbage heads, a sack of onions and a gunny sack of potatoes. Yep that was it.


We washed beans in river water and then got out our jugs of water and started to boil beans. Speak of being out of my element, the women I know were shaking their heads like we were nuts, one woman came and found me up stairs and pulled me back to the kitchen her name is Falencayah. Fal for short. With hand gestures she shows me a pressure cooker and wants me to use it, and in hand movements asked me how many I was cooking for, at the time I was thinking it was nine, but forgot we had a captain, his son, and a crew helper, anyway she pulls me into the storage room and points to rice and grabs our water and proceeds to help me cook this dinner, she shared garlic and some spices and had some oil and taught me how to use their version of a pressure cooker and even showed me with hand gestures that it would be done in thirty minutes.
WOW real and hot food, and I was so glad I had taken along salt and pepper and Johnny’s seasoning and instant coffee etc. Dinner was a hit, beans and rice oh so good!!!!!!!!!


Little did I know that was all we would eat for two weeks, plus some fruit we picked up. I learned to make a jungle stew and one night call it potato soup and then another night found some corn (field - yuck) to put in it and call it potato chowder.


Then cook rice and milk with butter, and another time rice and cabbage, and rice and tomatoes. I am not sure why but seems I did most of the cooking and dish washing on this trip, that is until I revolted a few times and then I got some help. I took it upon myself to do the dishes as I was determined we were not going to get sick from dirty pans. It was way too much hassle to heat water and use it, and we could not spare our drinking water so we invested in gallons of bleach, I would put dish soap on my rag and wash the dishes, the rinse them with the river water, then use bleach water for the final rinse, and no one got sick from this.


It was a real experience to be chugging down the Amazonas and cooking while moving, and to throw all the stuff that was peelings out the window on the way. Clean up after each meal was to fill up buckets of water with bleach and splash it on everything to try to get the cockroaches to not want to come back in to the area. It worked but drove them to our sleeping area. Oh life on the river!!!!

I would only take showers when we were moving along as the muddy water was pumped from the river and I could not stand the fact that someone had just pottied in it. So it was body odor all the way, I was so glad I had taken baby wipes, these became my baths.


PART THREE… Medico..(Clinic)
Monday Feb 15,1999


I am awakened with a loud crash, and a flash of light, the thunder and lightning are so intense and lingers overhead for so long that the whole river has been illuminated to daylight, I look at my watch and it is 4 am. Sue can not wake up but seems distressed, she is ranting in her sleep.

The winds are picking up with intensity now and I feel rain. Dr Bob and myself start dropping the tarps on both sides of the boat to repel the water…. It does not ever just sprinkle in monsoons.

Last night when the Adventistas got off the boat to go and stay at the school, they took our blow torch cook stove with them, I sent Neilson to find out about this and what we are going to use to cook with, he came back and told us it was their stove, not the boats , but they would be happy to cook a meal for us, so Neilson took up some rice and cabbage and canned milk for them to prepare later in the day.


Today was the day that Medico was going to start and since we all were up early we needed to get organized for this. Dr Dave the dentist had Neilson (our interpreter) tell captain Ohlahvooh that we needed to get out the hoses and scrub the decks down so we could bleach them and have some resemblance of cleanliness, at first he acted put out with this idea but soon learned that the boat was going to get scrubbed down twice a day, after morning and evening clinic. No one realized that the floor had been painted a green color until the second day of soap and bleach.


The funny part to this is that Ohlahvooh and his son started out as smelly greasy little men and by the time we left the boat, they were bathing daily and acting like they had pride in the boat’s appearance, I even saw them washing handrails after clinic one day.
Clinic started today at 10 am and went on until 7:30 pm. The Medico side of the boat saw 65 people and the Dentista side saw 30 people, (most of the dental patients had multiple extractions). The only thing the Dentist could do was pull teeth. It is the only service offered here, it was not effective to offer cleanings when so many had rotten and infected teeth. Andrew’s job was to hold the head like a headrest so Dr Dave could inject and pull…Kara’s job was to keep all the equipment washed and swabbed in sterile solution. All the rubber gloves, needles and gauze pads where taken up and buried in the jungle at the end of the day, even thought the Amazonas people throw everything into the water, we just could not bring ourselves to do that unless it was food peelings or something the piranhas and other fish would eat.
Every day I felt sorry for Dave, he would pull so many teeth that his arms would cramp and his back was killing him from leaning over hours on end, yet he never complained.


The people from this particular area did not seem to have a lot of Indian in them, more Portuguese heritage, each area that was visited almost look like pure blood, like a lot of close, possibly inbreeding, had taken place as each village had different features from the last and features distinct to only them. I was always asking at clinic how old the women and children were. The little girls usually are married by the age of 12 or 13 and have one or two babies by then and most had at least ten by the age of 25 ………A few times I was very surprised to find out that a couple was modern and had went by line boat of several days to get vasectomies, in fact El Pastores asked Dr. Bob to give him a vasectomy, of course he refused as it was so dirty on the boat and we only did surgeries of emergent nature like when the little boy swung a machete and severed the Achilles tendon on his sister, she had to have surgery or she would never use the foot again… the tendon was pulled backed to its place and sutured.


The part of this part that is sad is that we never knew if it was successful, as we had to move on after giving instructions via interpreter in stitches removal.


These are the most patient people I have ever seen; they kept coming and lining up to be seen by Dr. Bob, no fussing complaining, just patience and a pure gratitude that we were there, the payment we got was the "Abrogate" (thank you) and the look in the eyes that said it all. I later found out that the Brazilian government makes promises to them that they will get medico every three months, yet it has been three years since any Drs. have been there and the last ones were Americans.


One particular young mother really touched my heartstrings. I noticed her way back in line because she was so small, and carried a child that looked to be about 6 months old and had another child that was learning to walk, yet she appeared to be so very young herself, later I found out that she was 13 years old and indeed these were her children. She had come to Medico and waited in line all morning, at two in the afternoon we all voted to take an hour break. Everyone was asked to leave the boat and come back later, this young mother just sat down by the side rail to wait. We made sandwiches and I noticed the little toddler child looking at me, not saying anything just looking at me, I went and made him a sandwich and gave it to him, he took it and ate it like he had not eaten for awhile, so I went and made little mamacita a sandwich also. She tried to get the 6 month old to take a bite but he kept turning his face away, little momma tried to nurse him with her tiny little breasts that looked like robin eggs and he turned away from that.


By this time Dr. Bob was looking at her very intently and talking about this family, that it looked like the mom was feverish with malaria and the children had bloated bellies full of worms…. Our hour was soon over and it was back to clinic as right on cue the boat filled up again with patients. Little momma was the first to be seen, Dr. Bob had me come with him to the back end of the boat so he could check her breasts... seems she had very little milk and was getting over malaria which had in fact help to dry up her milk. However, this was not the baby’s problem as the baby was old enough to drink from a cup. Via the interpreter we found out that the baby had been listless and lethargic for several weeks and in all actuality was not going to live very much longer, simply failure to thrive…poor mamacita she knew this and so did Dr. Bob and he was at a loss as to know what to do or even what was wrong, the only thing he had to offer was an IV drip with antibiotics. He asked her to return the next day for another treatment. She never came back.


The irony to all of this is that one of the med students that was (and later catches up to us) assigned to our boat, had specialized in rural pediatric medicine and could have been of the greatest value to Dr. Bob, had not arrived yet. Dr. Karla later said the child was probably so anemic from internal parasites that a blood transfusion and getting rid of the parasites would have in all probability saved the baby’s life…. We all assumed he died.


I fear this day will never end. All of us are fighting exhaustion, yet the patients keep coming and it is starting to feel like herding cattle through, Sue’s job is that of pharmacist, mine is to learn enough Portuguese to be able to tell the patients how to take the meds. Our poor interpreter was so busy with getting out of each patient what was wrong and writing it down on a piece of paper that they handed to the Dr. when it came their turn to be seen, also he had to run to the Dentista side and assist with interpretation. I think I had to learn certain parts of the language in such a hurry that I even sounded Portuguese. I can tell you to "dose pilla por gia e noche e manyan e gia do tre" and to put this on your rash and to take with food etc…


It was now 7 pm and we had the generator running for the lights and were getting ready to wash and bleach the boat again when a canoe with an outboard motor showed up with a family in it. They had traveled for hours to get to the clinic when the rain had hit so hard they had to go to shore to wait it out, well here we are at it again it was a good thing we had our dinner cooked by the girls that El Pastores had found (twin 15 yr. olds) because I do not think we would have had the strength to fix anything but sandwiches again.


The blessing to this day was while we had the hour off earlier in the day; it rained so hard, like nothing I had ever seen before, that Andrew, Kara and myself got out the shampoo and went up on the top deck and faced away from each other and showered in the rain, we left on our underwear but to be bathing in clean fresh water was almost like a sensual experience, such a small thing brought the three of us such immense joy.


Tue February 16, 1999
Clinic started today at 9 am, Dr. Bob decided yesterday to do a wrist surgery this morning…one of the twin girls that had cooked our dinner yesterday had a growth on the wrist so big that it was cutting off the circulation to the hand, he felt that it was some foreign body that had encapsulated in the wrist and filled with fluid…upon cutting into the wrist and opening the encapsulated matter he realized it was a very large ganglion and it had roots that entwined blood vessels and nerves, and could not be taken care of on a boat. She needed to get herself to Manaus and to a hospital to have this done, but to afford her some relief he removed as much of the ganglion as he felt safe in doing.


One of the workers on the boat was a young 24-year-old man named Alex. He made a point of telling everyone that he was much much man (mucho mucho) because he was Jacare (Caiman) hunter, he almost acted very superior to us for several days, almost like he was in a different league than we were, sorta standoffish. Well seems Mr. Mucho man was up playing soccer and collided with someone and his toe was ripped off at the joint…well poor Mucho man was reduced to tears as he was carried down to the boat, his toe dangling, being held on by a few threads of skin. Dr. Bob got out the Betadine and told me to put on gloves and have him hang his foot off the edge of the boat and for me to start scrubbing it…OH MY GAWD…poor mucho man and I both were in tears by the time I got it scrubbed.
While Dr. Bob was in the process of numbing Alex’s foot so he could manipulate the toe back into place, a boat pulled up and our med. students arrived, how they found us is a very long story, just suffice it to say they did and they brought an interpreter with them a woman named Fatchemah…We all had never met before this but to them it did not matter they were so glad to see Americans they hugged us all.


Since they had arrived Alex took an instant liking to Dr. Karla. See, she had meaty thighs also, large butt and breasts like myself…we had to go all the way to Brazil to be lusted after. So after D.r Bob popped Alex’s toe back on it would not stay, so Alex wanted Dr. Karla to try to get it to stay, (by this time he was in no pain as the meds had kicked in and he was in la la land with the woman of his dreams.) Well, all Dr Karla did was to stitch the skin closed and set the toe in the right position and wrap gauze around it and duct tape it to the other toes…but the scene was set, he was smitten by her. This gets kinda funny later as he is doing Brazilian things to impress her, which, in our culture would seem strange.


It was another long day today, we saw about 80 people. It will get better as Dr. Lisa and Dr. Karlaare here now. But poor Dr. Dave, he is so tired he can hardly eat at the end of the day, he says he is going to start to take two hours off in the afternoons so he can go and lay down.


February 16, 1999 (cont.)…pit vipers, fire ants, and the hokey pokey.


Tonight, El Pastores, Sue, Dr. Bob and myself decided to go up to the school to have a look around, we had not been able to do this as the hill was so muddy we could not get up it, yet these graceful agile Brazilian women managed to get up and down it with children and carrying food to us...how, is one of the mysteries of this place. The four of us go into the school to have a look, it seems so peculiar to us to see hammocks strung from rafters in the class room, these wonderful people are so laid back that if a child gets tired it is just fine with them if they go to siesta.


Children come to school only several days per week and usually stay overnight as it is so far to travel for classes, then they return home via the jungle or a boat. Not all villages have schools, in fact they are few and far between, this is a new school and it has a generator that runs a few lights at night
So this place also dubs for an activity center or a place to hold weddings, etc. The women are gathering around us now and are showing us everything they have accomplished; you can feel their pride. They as a community built this school with no help from the government. One of the women is laughing and trying to tell me something, she is very insistent and so desperately wants me to understand her, I tell her "un momento" and go out to find Neilson. Neilson tells me that they are planning a celebration at 8 pm in our honor as we head back to Autez tomorrow, he tells them we accept and will come off the boat at that time.
In the mean time El Pastores is taking us for a walk in the jungle...what beauty we see and it is not even the time of year when the flowers bloom, nonetheless it is one of the grandest places on this earth to be…and in spite of the hard way of life, these people have maintained such a balance in their lives, they believe in their God, they love their families and seem to be truly happy.


On this walk I noticed El Pastores sweeping the grass inward with his feet, like he is laying down a cushion to walk on, I think this is a good idea as it is still a little muddy and I am wearing thongs, (my feet are too swollen to get shoes on) so I do the same, in fact I make an exaggerated effort to show him I am doing the same thing. “Yes I understand body language very well”, he nods his approval to me. Well, later the interpreter tells me to walk through the jungle like this because any pit vipers will be pinned down, and have less chance to strike at us. OH MY GAWD, if I’d have known I am sure I would have been a little grease spot left. WOW, what was I thinking?


On this walk we see pineapple, banana trees, and cashew nuts, (actually, the flower is the most prized part to the natives as it is very sweet and adds something to the diet that they need). We also see some of the same things we have, like corn, tomatoes, potatoes, garlic, onions, etc. Small world after all.
We follow El Pastores a ways and he stops at a small building and goes inside. We take this time to investigate around this hut …since this building (and most are) up on stilts you can see that it also becomes a shelter for the goats and pigs and whatever else wants to get out of the elements.

I am out back investigating some wooden boxes that have been fastened together to catch rainwater when I hear Sue yelling. By the time I run to the other side of the hut, she is not just yelling she is screaming and is doing a dance, seems she was getting film of some banana tree when she steps in a nest of fire ants. I help her to get them off of her and she has to go and sit down. She is in a lot of pain. The intense burning lasts for about twenty minutes. El Pastores motioned for her to go to the river, (to do what we never did know). We counted twenty stings, and later found out that people have died from fire ant stings…
So what was Dr. Bob doing all this time? Well, later he said he saw we had it under control so he filmed the whole thing.


It is now almost 8 pm and time to go to the little party that the village is having. About a hundred people show up. Sixty from our boat that had traveled with us, and the rest from surrounding homes.


I’m thinking at this point I am so tired; all I really want to do is go to my hammock and crash and feel sorry for myself. But I went, and I am glad. It turned out to be one of the most memorable nights of my life.


The ladies had made a drink called cupewasue; it is a fruit that is picked when it has turned to slime, the contents look frothy and remind me of egg whites, it is beaten down to pulp size chunks and sugar is added, it tastes like sweetened cod liver oil, but out there dancing in the heat of the jungle night...it was the tastiest drink I have ever had.


The party went on for two hours and we learned to dance to some very cute Amazonas folk dances. One in particular was especially fun, it was called the cockroach dance and involved a lot of jumping wiggling and spinning, then you danced around the ring and chose a person to take your place, I was so hot and exhausted from being chosen (remember I have meaty thighs) that I grabbed the movie camera to take pictures just so I could get out of it. I laughed till I cried.


Here is Dr. Bob, a person I have known for thirty years, and have only known the professional side of him, just out dancing and whooping it up and having the best of times, and Dr. Dave is so funny. He decided that the natives needed to learn a new dance, so he teaches them the hokey pokey, it is all so crazy out there in the jungle that night… I will forever look back to that time as one of my fondest memories.


Wednesday Feb 17,1999


It is now time to leave the Acara river and head back to the Amazon River. We had clinic in the morning to finish up the remainder of the villagers that were left to be seen, it is sad to wave goodbye to the generous people of this place, yet we did leave a little of us behind…a new dance called the hokey pokey. The return trip to Autez will take another six hours, so it gives us free time to do any laundry that needs to be done. It is hopeless to wash anything in muddy water and exchange the body odor for algae, yet we do not have a lot of clothing along as so much was taken up with medical supplies. (Upon leaving the Amazones I threw out my clothing and bought a couple of new shorts and tops in Rio.)


Last night upon going back to the boat after the party, Dr. Bob and myself both got bitten by fire ants, I had seven stings and he had three, this morning finds me having a reaction to them in the form of a fever and intense itching, so of course I scratch. Wrong move. They become infected within one day and start to weep and this helps to draw the flies or at least I think that is what is drawing the flies but will never know for sure!!!!!


On the way back to Autez the boat is once again filled up with El Pastore’s Adventistas, so to help kill some time I asked Fal if she would like me to cut her hair, she said she would love it (all this via the interpreter) well we had some missed communications and 20 people lined up for hair cuts, geez how strange was this, hair flying off a boat as fast as I could get it cut, Dr. Bob and Sue get out the video camera and film this. Can’t wait to see it.


Upstairs I hear a lot of jumping going on and it sounds like everyone is having a good time, so I go to investigate and it is Dr. Dave with the kids doing the hokey pokey. Well Olahvoo stops the engine and comes back to say not to jump around as the floor is not safe, it might cave in, and while we are stopped he decides to bilge the boat (remove water to keep from sinking). I have grown accustomed to this as it is done about every two hours round the clock and has to be done with a sump pump generator. When he starts the engines back up he asks me if I want to steer the boat for awhile, (remember I have meaty thighs) so I tell him yes that would be great.


I ask Sue if she will video it for me and she agrees, then she asks if she can steer, then everyone gets in on it, even El Pastores gets in on the act, well so much for Ohlahvoo getting me alone again, in fact he never asked again, he knew.


We arrive back in Autez and the rains have hit us with a vengeance, it is sorta neat as the laundry we have hanging out is getting a good rinsing. Once the boat has docked Fal comes up to me with a note in Portuguese for me and with tears in her eyes, she takes my hand and kisses it and puts her hand on her heart and then on mine, gives me a big hug and is gone. I broke down and cried fell in love with these people in such a short time. What else can I say?
When the rains let up a little, Sue, Dr. Dave and myself get out our raincoats and decide to go into town to have a look around, what a gorgeous little town this is. So clean, yet so very old and broken down with reminders of the Portuguese heritage everywhere and the Spanish influence.


We spot a little pub and step inside to have a few Cervesas, how charming it is to sit in the doorway and drink beer and watch the people hustle by, someone goes by with a big fish, someone else with a wheel barrow full of fruits, we spot several of the women from the boat and they have found some eggs. Goody… eggs for breakfast tomorrow. We ask them if they want to join us and they politely refused, I think they were afraid it would reflect on the Adventists or something, oh well the brews went down real good without them.


Feb 18,1999 ………Cobra bite, and Euler


I awake at 6 am, I had made arrangements with El Pastores to use his phone at his house to call Tom this morning, and I am very excited at the thought of hearing his voice. Breakfast this morning was fried potatoes and eggs, sure is nice to not have to eat left over whatever from last night’s meal.
The rains from yesterday have left everything soaking wet, we all have to get out suitcases and air the insides out and try to dry towels and hammocks…clothesline is strung from one end of this boat and back, and poor Dr. Bob keeps hitting it and yanking off his hat and glasses.


El Pastores arrives to pick me up, he is ridding a small motorbike and motions for me to get on, I feel completely silly as I am bigger than the bike, and it can barely make it to the top of the hill.


Ten minutes later we pull up in front of his little cottage, and he motions me to come inside, I am greeted by his wife, child and another woman that appears to be his mother, because she is tall like he is. His wife asks me to sit down, and hands me a cup of coffee and a biscuit. I accept this generosity, but feel very uneasy as I have not the right language skills to converse, and the whole time I am there they are beaming like it is such a privilege to them for me to have come to visit. I look around inside the house, it sparkles with cleanliness yet it is always so muddy outside, I wonder how they keep the floors so clean, then realize they have no shoes on and I do and I have left muddy little tracks behind.


El Pastores motions me to the phone as he finally had gotten an international operator on the line. I hear Tom’s voice and although it has only been a week it fills me with emotions that spill out in the form of tears streaming down my cheek. I do not think Tom can tell as the phone line is so bad we can barely hear each other and I fear we will lose connection soon, so I tell him happy birthday and tell all hello and Dr. Bob wants him to call his wife, I tell him I love him and we hang up. I turn around and Mrs. El Pastores has tears in her eyes, she knows …she says "ah, amore su esposo…(I don’t speak Portuguese but this is the gist). Then I am taken back to the boat.


When I get back to the boat everyone was waiting, as we are to leave and go up the river to another village and have clinic, Bob takes a head count and realizes Nancy is missing, so several people head out to find her, she went sight seeing without letting anyone know where she was going. This delayed us by another hour.
Finally we are on our way, since we are out in moving water we take this time to swab and bleach the boat off, I go up to tell the three 17 year olds that are with us that they need to come and help, and find them all sick with heads hanging off the side of the boat. Kara is especially sick and is running a fever, Dr. Lisa and Karla are the next ones to come down sick, and so for part of this day five they are taking turns at the handrail.


We arrive at another village and it is only a few hours work, for this I am glad, I need to lay down, I do not have the flu like the rest but my feet are so swollen and my ant bites are stinging and I am having symptoms like a bladder infection that is doubling me over…. (I fight this problem for two weeks) and am told it is a build up of salts in the bladder from lack of urination. I am sweating faster than I can rehydrate myself, and the only time I get relief is at night when the sweating ceases.


We arrive at Iguapinu village late in the afternoon so will wait until morning to have clinic. At 7pm a canoe arrives and via the interpreter we learn that a cobra had bitten a man, so off it is to do a hut call. I am very surprised, as I did not know this country had cobras. This man only got a small amount of venom or he would of already been dead. Dr. Bob treats his fever, gives him antihistamines and antibiotics and says we will come back in the morning.


Friday February 19,1999


Happy birthday, Tom, I am sorry I am not home on your 50th…


Dr. Bob and Joann go back to the cobra bite victim; his leg is grotesquely swollen, but his fever has broken and his heart rate and all seem to be good. Dr. Bob feels he will be alright.


We do clinic for a few hours then it is time to move on, our goal is to get to a village called Euler, and set up clinic there for several days.


We go through channels and canals that make me feel like I am watching something on National Geographic, it is so narrow…I wonder how the captain can squeeze a barge through this area, and I marvel at his skill to do so. Many times he has shown just what a good boatman he is, it is very apparent that he has been on the river his whole life and know every little trick it takes to safely deliver us to where we need to go. This area is so tight you can reach out and touch trees from the top deck, and the vegetation so dense it has moss hanging from it…I am in awe, and I am here to see all of this.


We arrive in Euler, it is a very strange and hard place to describe, and we had to go up channels to get here and once we came off the channels we came into a clearing that almost looks like a bay, or a huge lake. (Later in the year that is just what this is, a lake and is not accessible by outside boat as the waters dried up)


This is a large village of about 2,000 people; they look to be of pure Indian heritage, with no outside influence at all, it is apparent at first glance these are very poor and not very socialized with outsiders. This is one of several villages that I felt uneasy to be in. These were not friendly people and the health problems here made me very nervous.


Clinic was set up and at first it seemed like it was going to be a slow day, so I went upstairs to write in my journal. After about an hour Sue came and got me, as Dr Bob wanted help. Dr. Lisa and Dr. Karla where being swamped by people getting on the boat, these were not especially kind people either, very cranky and demanding of us.


The biggest problem for this village was worms, scabies and head lice, so my job was to give out head lice meds and scabies meds and worm meds and it was the interpreters job to get these people off the boat as it was listing a little from needing bilged and too much weight hanging off of the one side.


What a day, we saw over two hundred people that afternoon and Dave had pulled something over 100 teeth….I do not like it here, it is dirty and I do not feel safe, I think this is a place where we can be robbed or something…I am growing restless and angry, and poor Sue is getting sick, she has so many infected bites and for some reason the mosquitoes like her and the horrible rash on her legs is getting worse.


We are going to spend the night right where we are I am told, now all along I have went along with the program but now I am not. I go to the interpreters and Dr. Bob and insist we move up stream for the night I think this is not a good place to be and what is the point of helping people that will harm us or at the least rob us ( it was already mentioned that Alex would stay on watch all night), upon my insistence everyone else joined in…so we moved to a cove away from the town.


This was a very long night, dogs kept barking and roosters crowed at 2:30 in the morning, and so hot without a single breeze all night, but at least I felt a little safer.


Saturday February 20,1999

We do not have clinic until this afternoon as it is Adventistas day to go to Church (Advents do not work on Sabbath but Dr. Bob makes an exception so as to not waste the day.


Everyone that was an Adventista asks me if I will go to church with them, I tell them all no, and ask why are they going since it will be in Portuguese and how can they possibly understand what is being said?


I am told that it is for goodwill and to make the right impression here. Also was told that we are to wear dresses on Advent Day. Well, as you know I said a few unkind words to that and never did wear a dress…This is where I started to get the real reason we were out in the jungle; it was to not only do medical work but to promote a religion. It was not suppose to be this way, I voiced my opinions, and that is all I will write about this matter.


11:20 Advents return from church, so we have lunch and clinic is set up again. I am so tired of this filthy town and its dirty diseased inhabitants, I am now starting to get a very bad attitude, give me back the people that tell us thanks and have a smile on their faces, the ones that seem to have joy at just living.
I talk to Dr. Bob about this and he feels like it is because of so much illness, diseases etc that these people just have no joy, isn’t manners a universal thing? I think it is.


Tonight Alex takes Dr. Bob and Joann Jacare hunting, after an hour or so they come back to the boat with a little one about one foot long, we all hold it and take pictures of it before it was put back into the river. Andrew, Dr. Dave and Kara are fishing off the boat Kara seems to be the only one getting anything, she takes her fish and cuts them into small pieces to use as bait, from then on all she is able to catch is piranha, and she has some lame idea to leave them out on the deck so they will dry out so she can take them home... All they did was rot and I kicked them off the boat, but at least she got her picture taken with them. I fished for a while with no luck, I was happy to not catch anything, as I really didn’t want to touch them anyway.


Later in the day two aluminum boats pulled up beside the barge, I was on the top deck and looked over to see a very young girl (later learned that she was 15 and married to the wealthiest man around here, a Brahma cattle baron and plantation owner I was told)… it seemed so odd as she was strikingly beautiful and very well dressed and had a new boat with a Yamaha outboard motor. How strange, this was an indigenous area with unhappy and unhealthy people, yet here she was so pretty and seemed so full of vitality learned that she had come across the way from the big beautiful house we had been admiring from the distance, to see if she could take us all sight seeing around the area. Her husband had insisted we were to be shown a good time.


Arrangements were made to do this the next morning as it was getting late in the day by this time. We move to a new spot away from the village to moor up for the night. A man from the Adventist church had invited the barge to hook up to his houseboat; the houseboat was tethered to the shore by a rope.


Sunday February21, 1999


12:20 A.M. In my sleepy haze I see lights go by, and am wondering why am I seeing lights go by, do they have river patrol here? I drift in and out of sleep and am feeling so cozy as I have finally come to terms with my hammock, and a wind is blowing that is cooling everything down. I am at peace. The next instant I hear banging …then knocking like someone knocking on a door, I get out of my hammock and cannot believe what I see, the barge has pulled the houseboat away from the shore and the two of them are attached and have drifted across the (bay) like waters and down the river. I think this is the funniest thing I have ever seen, I yell to the others "remember how you wanted to get a closer look at the big house on the hill? Well we are there".


This is hysterical; it’s like Gilligans Island or something…and the banging? It was the boat mates running and knocking on the houseboat door to let them know we had pulled them lose from the edge and had drifted way across and down the river.


So what does a good captain do at 12:20 in the morning when you are drifting to sea with a house attached to you? Well you put it back where you found it and go back to bed. No biggie to them, you cannot get the Portuguese people to get upset about anything. TOO FUNNY!!


8:00 A.M. the boats are here to pick everyone up, Sue and I have decided to play martyr and stay behind to protect all of the medical supplies and our luggage..(Besides the biggest blackest clouds I have ever seen loomed right overhead.) …and then it rained and it rained. It rained so hard and so long that it was bouncing off the water by three feet. Wow we made the right choice to stay put.


Cattle transport boats were very busy moving cattle to higher grounds and canoes were being filled as fast as they could be bucketed out. I looked out across the waters and yelled for Sue to grab the camera, three women had been in a canoe and it had capsized them overboard, only one woman was able to make it back into the canoe, so the other two had started to swim to shore just at about the time that a cattle barge was heading their way, it was looming on them, someone from shore saw what was going on and zoomed out in their boat to wave the barge off before it ran over them. Don’t be surprised if you see this on real video, we might try to get it sent in.


10:00 A.M. everyone gets back from boat ride and they are soaking wet, but no one seems to mind as they all go get towels and dry off, change clothes and say it felt good to have clean water on them.


We have clinic until 4 P.M. Just a repeat of the day before, lots of malaria, scabies, worms, etc. Sue, myself, Lisa and Karla decide to go into the village to find fruits and vegetables, we found some eggs but changed our mind when the person selling them lived right next door to a quarantine place for typhoid. We did find fruits that we could peel, as this was the safest way to eat fruit there.


We head out of Euler to go to a place that is translated as New Heaven Valley. I am so glad to be leaving this horrible place it is so filthy here I do not think anything will help these people until the Brazilian government steps in and gives them some resemblance to sanitation and an education as to how to help themselves.


We are once again in Black waters, and its contrasting beauty is a delight after the few days in Euler. We pull into a canal and spend the night; it is peaceful and so quiet. We sit on the top deck and watch the bats chase the bugs, see the fireflies zipping about and really enjoy the full moon and the stars.


Amazones the final chapter


Monday February 22,1999


We travel five hours to get back onto the Amazon from the tributaries. The water is very rough today; so choppy it is rocking our boat. The water is filled with debris and the Captain has to do a lot of maneuvering to stay out of the path of the logs that are floating everywhere, he is an excellent boatman and certainly knows his job.


We had travel about two hours when we hear a huge thump; it is so loud it also must of concerned the captain, as he immediately shut the motors down and everyone went to the front of the boat to investigate, we all were very sure that a log had been run over, but what we found was Jonathan laying flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him, he had taken a very nasty fall and landed on his back and head. How he did not kill or injure himself is beyond any of us, the only problems from this was a sore back that lasted a few days.


We again leave the Amazon and head up another tributary that parallels the river and joins back up without backtracking. Speak of a strange sight; guess what is growing in crop rows like we would grow corn? Yes it is hemp, the smokable kind. We follow this tributary for about thirty miles and as far as the eye can see that is the only crop that is grown here. It is grown into small trees and then only the leaves are harvested to keep the plant producing pot year around. I am told that it is grown all over here as nothing is done about it and it is not a crime to posses it or grow it, only to transport it out of the country. These fields look large enough to supply the entire world…and it goes on for miles and miles.





It is 9:30 P.M. now; we have been traveling on the river for 14 hours, working our way back towards Manaus, so it is time to stop for the night we pull into a small tributary to spend the night after our usual meal of almost all carbohydrates and our daily clean down of the boat. After tossing rotting food (no refrigeration), most of us decide to call it a night. El Pastores and Alex decide to Jacare hunting one more time, and of course they get a big one this night. They decide to tie him up with a harness and leave him in the water to show everyone the next morning, this is a night that I wish I would of had a tape recorder to tape the sounds of the night. It starts out with hearing the sounds of bats echoing, Dolphins spitting, fish jumping, dozens of different kinds of frogs croaking, Jacare snapping, the caught Jacare splashing, bugs buzzing, Brahma bulls bellowing, dogs barking, and at 2:30 A.M roosters crowing……….and the Captains CB radio was left on and was jabbering in Portuguese.


Tue February 23,1999


Could of killed the rooster, in fact I went and got a fry pan and went to El Pastores and pointed to the rooster, the pan and then my mouth. He is a vegetarian so he didn’t take me seriously. Dr. Bob and the rest of us have decided to go back a day early as we are almost out of food. Our breakfast is crackers and some jam someone brought…Still I did mention the roosters again and everyone said "you kill and we will cook"… it wasn’t the killing that bothered me, it was the catching.


8 A.M. and it is time for clinic, this area has a lot of Dengue fever and malaria, we saw very little worms and no scabies or head lice. It is strange how every different area has it’s own problems.


Some have problems with one parasite while others have problems with fevers or leprosy, and once in awhile like the Village of Euler it has it all…maybe Bob is right, they are just putting in time.


This is going to be our last day on the boat, and we have three five gallons of fresh water left…I sneak upstairs and get out my little bucket and pour water into it, then wash my hair and rinse it in fresh water, oh my gawd this is so great, so refreshing, so clean…hmmm maybe I can take a sponge bath in fresh also, no one will notice. I do all of this, and get dressed in clean clothing, for the city today, and throw all of my clothes off the boat. Sad but true, the villagers grabbed our dirty disgusting clothes as fast as we threw them off the boat.


I am feeling so good that I holler down to ask Sue to come up, and show her the water and help her wash her hair. Then next I go and get Karla and Lisa, and Kara…aha we felt like women again, except we had not shaved in two weeks, we were advised to not do this as it could lead to infection, so the joke was who’s hair was getting long enough to braid.


Clinic is over now and the engines of the boat are on and as we are backing up I realize that this is it, my adventure is almost over now, and it will be a memory soon, the rest of this day is very sad, the people on this boat and the crew have come to be like an extended family to me, where I am standing… this moment in time will never be again..


I am giving stuff away to the crew, I do not want to pack it home and this stuff will mean so much to them. I give the Captain some duct tape and my boom box and a dozen tapes. Also a full bottle of Costco aspirins and tell him its for headaches, I give my pillow to Alex he seems very appreciative of this. And I give my most valuable possession to the captain’s son, my slippers. He has been eyeing them since day one, now they are his.


Ohlavooh has decided to not have us "gringo touristoes hop a line boat to go back into the city, so he is waiting for darkness so he can sneak us back in on a little used side port, it is part of an area called Flavella (slums), he has no license to go into Manaus for his boat, but nonetheless he is risking this for us. After we pull into Flavella he has tears in his eyes and goes around the boat hugging everyone.


Neilson cant come out to say good by he is crying so hard, he is embarrassed, and mucho man is giving handshakes, yet I detect a tear for us and he squeezes our hands. All the luggage is handed off the boat and after this is done Alex hands me a gourd that he has been carving, on it there is a picture of the Boat we were on and he has carved an inscription "LEMRANCA DO AMAZONES."


The end


This is where the main story ends, the next week we are in Iguassu Do Foz, went white water rafting, to a bird park, to a zoo, a gem mine. Then flew to Rio and did the Ipanemah and copacabana beaches, went up to see the Christo and to sugarloaf Mountains gondola ride. I think Rio is a gorgeous place, but I am convinced that every Brazilian gets crazy behind the wheel of a car, and the only reason that lines are on the road is for decoration… and anything you have heard about Brazilian bus drivers is true.